But Mase was right.

When I’d turned around after the Kiss Cam and seen the expression on Sacha’s face, I’d frozen and taken a second to absorb it. In the blink of an eye, he’d wiped the look off and smiled tightly. He’d kept smiling tightly the rest of the game. From that moment, all the way up to him getting in line behind me to go through security minutes before, he’d acted a little strangely.

I didn’t let myself think about it. What was the point? Maybe he thought I was a floozy for letting his friend kiss my cheeks. As soon as the thought entered my brain, I pushed it away. That wasn’t like him. It was dumb.

“Who knows what he was thinking. It doesn’t really matter,” I said to him with a shrug.

My friend squeezed my shoulder in return as we made it to the gate and went to a vacant seating section where we plopped down.

I glanced at my ticket before slipping it into my backpack’s zipper. “Is one of you sitting next to me on the flight?”

“Why?” Eli asked.

“Because…”

He leaned back and eyed me. "Let me guess, you’re going to sit someplace else?"

When I nodded, Eliza started howling and thrust his hand out in Mason’s direction. "You owe me twenty, bitch."

"Damn it, Gaby," Mase grunted, already reaching into his pocket for his wallet.

"You assholes bet?"

They both nodded in agreement, exchanging money. "Duh."

“You failed me, Flabs. Come on. I thought for fucking sure you’d tap into those marbles you call balls and not ditch us,” Mase huffed.

For one second I felt a little guilty for wanting to go sit with Sacha despite how reckless for my heart it was, but then I remembered. “Oh, right. Like that time you guys left me at that party to go mess around with those girls, and I had to walk home with Gordo in the middle of the night?”

Yeah, that had them shutting up.

"I hope you both get Ebola," I added with a laugh. It really wasn't that surprising that they'd made bets or that one of them was upset they’d lost. I used to make bets with Eli over the most random stuff. Like how Mom react to certain things. With our mom there were certain levels of anger: she'd rub her forehead if she was only a little mad, next she'd start slamming drawers, then she'd scream our full names out, or finally, if she was really mad—and this was only with Eli—she'd start crying, asking God out loud what she had done to deserve to get treated “like this.”

Sacha appeared a second later, sitting down in the empty seat next to mine and began talking to my brother about some band they really liked that had released an album that day. An hour passed by quickly. The next thing I knew, we were waiting in line to board the plane, and Sassy was asking Miles if he’d mind sitting with Eli and Gordo on the plane so I could take his seat. Miles was extremely laid-back, and he didn't seem to care about the change in seating arrangements.

Once onboard, the plane was the biggest one I'd ever seen. There were three sections with four seats in the middle and three seats on each other side. I just followed Sacha as he slipped into a window seat in the middle of the aircraft with me taking the middle. Carter waved before sitting with Mateo and Julian on the opposite side of the plane. I saw everyone else scatter into different rows.

A lady came and sat in the seat next to mine, telling Sacha and I hi.

Folding my hands into my lap, I turned my head to look at my seat buddy, who had his attention focused on me. “Is there anything else I should know about before the plane takes off?”

One smoky-colored eye went a little squinty. “Like what?”